Authors: Kathryn Leigh Scott
The Bunny Years (17 page)
J
OYCE
N
IZZARI
I
t was absolutely true that when you visited a Playboy Club you saw Playmates from the pages of the magazine greeting you at the door. I had already appeared as a
Playboy
centerfold when I worked as a Door Bunny for the opening of the Chicago Club (February 1960), Miami Club (May 1961) and the New Orleans Club (October 1961).
“Hef was the first romance in my life, my first real love. Bunny Yeager, who had photographed me in swimsuits on the beach, introduced me to Hef at a party when he visited Miami in February 1958. I was 17, and he was a very boyish 33. There was an immediate attraction, but
I really fell in love with him when we stood on the dock that evening and kissed.
“The first time I visited Hef, we stayed in a sparsely furnished apartment he kept in the same building as Victor Lownes. We would often double-date with Victor and Bonnie Jo Halpin, and we all celebrated New Year's Eve together at The Cloisters in 1959. Late at night, the guys would toss ideas back and forth about the kind of Club they wanted to start. At one time, they thought that the Bunnies should be catsâand tried to come up with ideas for the costume.
“I posed for a
Playboy
cover photograph on my first trip to Chicago. The picture that appeared on the July 1958 issue is still one of my favorites. After that I think Hef just assumed that I would be open to becoming a Playmate, and we didn't really talk about it. I had done only cheesecake photos beforeânever anything nudeâbut I did the centerfold for December 1959 because I knew it would please him. That's how women were in those days when so much between the sexes was taken for granted.
Joyce Nizzari at home in Los Angeles.
“At about the time of the first Playboy Jazz Festival, I discovered that Hef had other women in his life. He had invited Betty Zuziak, who worked at the magazine, to the festival instead of me. I was heartbroken, simply devastated to think that I wasn't enough for him. I had grown up with parents who had me believing that happily-ever-after happened once you found someone you loved.
“It was a terrible time, made worse because I kept thinking things would change. I moved back to Miami, but in January 1960, he invited me to join him in Washington D.C., to attend John F. Kennedy's inauguration. That was our last time together.
“In the early 1960s I moved to Los Angeles. While working as a dancer and actress, I fell in love with my landlord and next door neighbor in Laurel Canyon, Bob Hogan, who was then doing the TV series
Combat
with Vic Morrow.
“I've stayed in touch with Hef over the years. Bob and I were living in Florida for a brief period in the early â70s. Hef, who was then dating Barbi Benton, invited us to join them for the opening-night gala of Playboy's Miami Plaza Hotel in December 1970. I had recently given birth to my son and I was so tired. I was thinking, âI'm only 30 years oldâis this all there is?' A night out at an exciting, glamorous event lifted my spirits and made me think things would get betterâand they did.
“I now live in Los Angeles close to both my son and my daughter, and run my own business doing medical transcribing. Age matters little to me. I'm always taking classes, looking for new things to do. Lately I've been working on a children's story based on a Hawaiian tale, âThe Rabbit in the Moon.'”
B
ARBARA
G
RANT
D
ENOUX
E
ighteen-year-old Barbara Grant, a Sandra Dee look-alike, was working at the Gaslight Club in 1960 and dating Matt Metzger, the newly hired general manager of the Playboy Club. “Matt was a friend of Hugh Hefner and Shelley Kasten,” Barbara recalls, “and one night they all came into the Gaslight on Walton Street. Hefner asked if I would like to be a Bunny at the Playboy Club, which hadn't yet opened. I liked the singing and dancing, which was part of the job at the Gaslight, but I wanted to give the new Playboy Club a try. I became one of the first Bunnies hired to open the Chicago Club. Working the lunch shift and occasionally filling in at night as a Door Bunny or a Table Bunny in one of the Showrooms, I could easily earn between $300â$500 a week. I shopped on Michigan Avenue and spent money on cocktail dresses and dry cleaning. I don't know where else it went!”
“Some of our customersâwealthy, older menâfelt free to come on to us. One middle-aged man asked me how much it would take to get me in bed with him that night. I was about 18 years old at the time. I looked him in the eyes and asked if he had a daughter. He did. I asked him how he'd feel if some man approached his daughter like that. He said, âI wouldn't like it and I'm really sorry I said it.' From that day on, I knew I could handle myself.
Shelly Kasten
“The bookkeeper came to me one day and said that a lot of the Bunnies weren't cashing their payroll checks. I couldn't believe it, but some of the girls were making so much cash in the beginning that those checks would just lie in their dresser drawers for weeks and months.”
“Going out with a customer after work was forbidden, but I didn't want to do that anyway. You have to wake up in the morning and look at yourself
in the mirror. No thanks. I liked my job. I was so fortunate to be independent and earning so much money. When I look back, I wish I'd had the common sense to invest that money! But I also think about the common sense I did have at 18âworking in that Rush Street club environment and not getting pulled into drugs or prostitution.
“In those days we drank Scotchâhard liquorâand we played as hard as we worked. It was easy for a girl to OD on speed and booze. After work she'd party, sleep a few hours and pop a Dexedrine to go back to work, not realizing that the pills would hit the liquor still in her body. There were several girls working at various clubs on Rush Street who did OD.
“But Playboy couldn't do enough for you if you conducted yourself like a âlady' and did your job well. There were girls who were trying to raise kids on their own, or break out of a marriage or start a careerâand the management worked with you. I was always in love, always having a problem with the man I imagined myself in love with. I think the management at Playboy realized it was dealing with very young, very pretty girls who were going to be a handful.
One Bunny who did OD on booze and pills was Connie Petrie, a pretty brunette with a lively personality, who had grown up in Chicago. Connie had been married for three years when she gave birth to a baby, who lived only 13 days. Her marriage failed and Connie took a job as a cocktail waitress at Mister Kelly's, a hot jazz club on Rush Street. She went to work at the Playboy Club in December 1961, and was soon one of the most popular Bunnies in the Penthouse, earning up to $300 a week. She lived with her boyfriend, a bartender, in a plush apartment and enjoyed the high life. A doctor told Connie to cut out the drinking or her kidneys wouldn't make it. But booze and pills fueled the nightlife on Rush Street and she didn't stop.
In late July, six months after Connie had started work at Playboy, Victor Lownes called the 26-year-old into his office to ask her about rumors that she was using marijuana. Connie flatly denied the accusation. Lownes asked her if she would be willing to take a lie detector test. Connie refused. It certainly wasn't an indication that she was guilty, but Lownes felt obligated to protect the Club's reputation. He fired her. Connie, reportedly devastated at losing her job, had a fight with her boyfriend, who managed to prevent her from jumping out an 11th-floor window. Hours later, her boyfriend awoke to find her sprawled on the bed, with four empty prescription bottles on the floor near her cold, outstretched hand. The newspapers reported that Connie Petrie had committed suicide because she had been fired from her Bunny job.
“We were Playboy Bunnies at a good time. I never looked back later and thought I was out of my mind to have worked as a Bunny. In 1961, I left Playboy to launch an acting career in Los Angeles. Later, after I married and my daughter was born, I worked briefly as a Bunny Mother. All in all, it was a great experience. I've explained to my daughter that you can become a very strong, independent person when you know you can support yourself and not have to depend upon anyone else to take care of you.”
